Shanghaied - 2ACW

Wow James G! Fantastic cliff hanger! Now the crazies have their martyr! I think you're about 6-years further in the future with this one of several possible timelines stemming from today's political unrest. I see this type of thing happening by the end of 2021 the way things are going!

37 – Martyr

McCleary had been housed on the Vulnerable Person’s Block in the Women’s Wing of the North Las Vegas Detention Centre. She had been among those on suicide watch and who were informers, sex offenders & murderers of children. ‘Celebrities’ such as her were placed there less they end up in danger in the General Population. There were extra guards on watch with tight security. Having been in jail before, when McCleary had been asked by Padley & Pierce to become a ‘martyr for the cause’, she had agreed to do it because she had long gotten over her fear of being locked up. Federal, state and local prisoners were all in the same detention centre as she was. Those people hadn’t frightened her too much, especially since she had been on that particular block. Access to her lawyer had been given though her ability to make a call out had been limited. The food had been terrible and the prison smell was all prevalent. Still, she had grinned and beared it for what she had believed would be the greater good. There was meant to be a court case in the end.

What she hadn’t signed up for was to die there though.

A guard found McCleary’s body within her cell with a bed sheet tied around her neck. At once, something inside him said that the prisoner hadn’t done that to herself. It just didn’t look right. Unable to tell what exactly gave him that gut feeling, when the guard tried to explain it to his superiors, he failed to make them understand what he had meant. Moreover, their primary concern was that the highest profile prisoner in the whole detention centre had died and that guard, plus the others on shift that night, were those ultimately responsible. A sh*tstorm was clearly coming down and everyone quickly tried to pass the buck onto those below them. The guards were at the bottom of the pile with that. Upon being found, revival efforts had been tried on the cell block and also in the infirmary. There was no chance of bringing McCleary back though. She’d been dead for at least an hour before being found. What hadn’t she been kept a better eye on? What hadn’t she been found earlier? Who was to blame? The focus in Las Vegas was on trying to find a suitable answer to those questions. In Washington, the Justice Department made that announcement of McCleary’s death the next morning without anyone there either knowing the answers to such questions. Of course, they wanted to discover what exactly had happened, but there were bigger problems ahead of an inquiry result: the public reaction to the death of (as her lawyer had called her) America’s only ‘political prisoner’.


Upon hearing the news, the personal opinion formed in the minds of so many Americans, no matter where they sat on the partisan divide, no matter in which part of the country that they lived, was that she had been murdered. That was a gut feeling – like that guard in Las Vegas had had – and one which wouldn’t go away afterwards. Her death in custody brought about that reaction. Who was responsible for her death was a different matter when it came to that consideration. A lot of ideas were had and many wild accusations thrown about. A strong belief was fast apparent among those in the West, especially among those who had been protesting at her detention, that the federal government had had her killed. That ‘made sense’ to a lot of people, even if they couldn’t explain why that had been done. McCleary had been making the case for secession first, arrested for sedition when arguing for a Second Republic next and then killed to shut her up due to the strong following that her ideas had managed to gain. Various political figures and troublemakers encouraged such a belief to serve their own ends, even if those were contradictory. There was always something to be gained in chaos, they concluded, no matter what the cost to others.

Rioting rocked the West through the last three days of 2028. There were outbreaks of civil disorder after McCleary’s death greater than had been seen during her week-plus detention. Peaceful protests were planned but those rapidly went out of control. Mayhem rocked cities and urban areas on a scale which no one had thought possible. Plenty of those who took part in it had not been supporters of McCleary yet out onto the streets they came. They rioted alongside others who were enraged at her ‘murder’. In addition to the immense protests-cum-riots, there were deliberate acts of political terrorism which took place among the violence. A Republican congressman in California (one of the few left) had called McCleary ‘trailer park trash’ and said that she ‘didn’t deserve to live’ in broadcast comments the night before it was announced she had died. Those remarks had brought him scorn from some of his fellow Republicans – including the president-elect who had disowned them – because they were considered going too far but others had welcomed them. He left his home in Redding the following morning to go San Francisco with his wife to the airport there. They were taking an unplanned vacation with the congressman realising that things were going to get really crazy after McCleary’s death. His car pulled out of the driveway and was sprayed with bullets. He and his wife died there before his corpse was afterwards dragged out of the vehicle, strung upside down from a streetlight and set on fire. The whole thing was livestreamed across Facebook. That company, and other social media networks, had promised in the past to be proactive in ceasing to broadcast ongoing acts of political violence when shocking events had taken place during the Years of Lead. They weren’t quick enough off the mark when that murder happened though. That young aide of Nevada DA Babcock, who’d been kidnapped by persons unknown demanding the release of McCleary, turned up dead on December 30th. She was dumped in public with her body having shown signs of torture. Babcock’s apartment in Carson City was burnt out after arsonists shot two sheriff’s deputies guarding it. Babcock was elsewhere, at an FBI safe house, but didn’t feel very safe at all.

Federal buildings were the focus of the rioting across Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington state. Nearly all were closed with court sessions suspended and office work being done from home in many cases among employees of government agencies. Some remained open though and surrounded by security personnel. The FBI, the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Customs & Border Protection kept operations running. Getting staff in and out was difficult and dangerous. Huge crowds gathered and there was a gauntlet to run. Deliveries and mail were unable to arrive: lunchbreaks couldn’t be taken off the premises. They were besieged with shots fired against them and attempts made to commit arson. The Federal Protective Service, plus private contractors, aided the efforts to protect those buildings and workers against the mobs which gathered. There was intelligence gathering done against those being behind the ongoing protests. This took place online with the identifying of Revolución and BLA key players keeping people riled up. There was also aerial surveillance done too using drones in the service of federal agencies. One of them was shot down in New Mexico – above Albuquerque – and another badly damaged when flying above protesters up in Portland. Video, audio and electronic surveillance packages within those low-flying aircraft were being gathered aplenty and feed into federal databases. When a drone overflew an ongoing riot in downtown Los Angeles, a shot rang out and a protester fell dead. Immediately, rumours ran rife that the drone had fired upon the crowd. The federal government was killing people in America with drones now, not just doing that overseas in foreign countries! Someone else had fired that shot though when aiming for the drone: his bullet missed and came back down to earth to kill an innocent. Such a truth wasn’t known nor was interested in by those seeking to inflame tensions even further than they already were.

To protect federal property in Denver, extra security teams were dispatched by the Department of Homeland Security. Governor Rowan got wind of them coming in and discovered that they were contractors from the private military company EXF Solutions rather than personnel from the large but overstretched Federal Protective Service. He called the Acting DHS Secretary and told him to not send them to Denver. Local police, aided by state troopers, had the situation in Colorado’s biggest city under control and didn’t want EXF Solutions in his city in number: there had been ‘issues’ with them before. Regardless of his desires, the private contractors were sent. Rowan couldn’t stop them making that deployment. Governor Pierce called up Walsh when he got wind that the Pentagon was US Army troops on standby to deploy to enforce order in his state. Pierce spoke with General Ferdinand and told the Secretary of Defence not to send the 82d Airborne Division to Los Angeles. Ferdinand countered that those troops were only being held ready for contingency operations and no deployment was in the offing. Still, if Walsh ordered it, the 82d Airborne would go to California whether Pierce wanted it or nor. Furious, Pierce promised ‘action would be taken’ if that happened. Ferdinand replied that any action undertaken to block any deployment as per federal law on the right to do so would be deemed insurrection by California’s governor. The two of them wouldn’t budge on the matter of who was in the right. Their huge blow up was a matter of egos all while troops sat at Fort Bragg unaware with no firm orders to move.

Those leading Democrats in the West who had openly opposed secession talk from others, Senator Dunbar, Congresswoman Sheldon & Lt.-Governor Webb, were all subject to open death threats made against them. Previously-unknown groups made the threats to their lives and those of loved ones. These were not aligned to Revolución and claimed to be speaking for ‘the people of the West’. Like lower-profile figures, others who had spoken out against the idea of West America recently, they kept their heads down during the chaotic days at the end of December. There was a time to be brave and a time to not be so foolish. They regarded the situation as worrying enough to take the latter action. There were other people doing what the 47th President had previously done and that congressman in California had attempted: leave. Longer holidays were taken by some people who had already gone away too. Being known as someone who had spoken out against the crazy concept of the West breaking away from the rest of the United States was regarded as becoming dangerous even for people with personal security. There was anarchy going on yet it was in so many ways targeted. To be a target, to end up like McCleary, wasn’t what sensible people wanted to see for themselves and their families.


Ashby, Carville, Gutierrez and King – four serving or former politicians – made a joint online statement on New Year’s Eve. They were all associated with the West America movement ahead of McCleary’s arrest and subsequent death. They took a step further during the violence. Nevada’s State Assembly Speaker, the former Colorado senator, one of New Mexico’s congressmen and Oregon’s retired governor each called for their individual states to hold plebiscites on whether the people in their states wished to remain part of the United States. Federal deployments of security forces and troops, real and imagined, were used as the justifications for this all… along with the claim that the US Government had committed the ‘murder’ of McCleary. They declared that they knew what they were doing in risking federal arrest yet claimed that their calls were for the greater good. They weren’t looking to be martyrs and so weren’t about to walk up to the nearest district attorney but neither did they go into hiding either.

Walsh at once issued orders from distant DC for their arrests to be made. The Acting Attorney General gave instructions to local DAs and FBI field offices. That was secession they were calling for. The four were to be arrested as McCleary had been. In neither Nevada nor New Mexico, such arrests couldn’t be carried out due to the ongoing rioting and danger to government officials. Oregon’s DA refused to carry out such an order: she was fired at once for that refusal. Governor Rowan intervened when he told Colorado’s DA to not carry out the arrest as he believed it to be unlawful. Federal law was thus something unable to be carried out in certain parts of the West whereas elsewhere, there was open anarchy. Interference from state officials was coming to allow that to continue. Walsh spoke with his Cabinet and members of the Congressional leadership (not in person but by video-conferencing). He proposed a course of action to put an end to it all. His Labor & Transportation Secretaries said they would resign if that happened: neither was from the West yet weren’t prepared to serve in a government which would do that there. Walsh fired them before they could walk. A call from Vice President Padley came to the US House Minority Leader – a fellow Democrat – while he was on the video-conference with the president and others. He took it off-screen and then relayed afterwards the details of what she had said from out there in California. Padley had claimed that those states where political figures had just called for referendums on the basis of possible secession had the democratic right to do that.

Senate Majority Leader Green called that ‘treason’. His description wasn’t argued against by the others. That was what they all thought she was at the centre of. FBI Director Cohen was asked by Walsh about that list of names he’d previously come to Camp David with: had there been additions to it? Yes, there had been though Ashby, Carville, Gutierrez & King were already on it. The president wanted federal warrants for the arrest of all of those people – one hundred and sixty-two by New Year’s Eve – drawn up and ready to be enforced. How was he going to make sure they happened? By doing what he’d just lost two more Cabinet members over.

Just before midnight (Eastern Standard Time), the lame duck Walsh, back over in the White House finally, spoke to the nation in an unscheduled address. He announced he was invoking the Insurrection Act. It would cover six states – AZ, CA, CO, NV, NM & OR – where there was widespread civil disorder and acts of sedition & secession attempts underway. Walsh added that it would be expended if necessary to further states, and his actions as president were additionally being done without the consent of the state governments involved. He told those watching and listening, not just in America but around the world too, that he was doing so to save the United States from those seeking to bring it down all for their own selfish political ends. The law would be obeyed, he finished his remarks with, and those guilty of breaking it punished.


End of Part Two

And so all the coming death and destruction is down to the greed and stupidity of one man, I hope this Carillo dies a slow painful death or failing that as humiliatingly as possible

Part Three – West America


39 – Insurrection

The Insurrection Act was a piece of legislation more than two hundred years old. It had been modified many times over the centuries yet remained a powerful piece of law to be used at executive authority: elsewhere, there were plentiful checks and balances on presidential power from a country whose leaders had long sought to avoid the mere whiff of dictatorship. As per the law, when he evoked it on New Year’s Eve 2028, President Walsh had to first issue a proclamation demanding that those committing acts of insurrection cease and disperse. There was no set time-frame from afterwards when action could be taken and specific details on what made the dispersion & cessation of insurrectional activities real though. That was left to the president’s judgement. Walsh needed time to prepare to act against what he and the US Government regarded as ongoing insurrection. An eighteen hour period was judged the minimum. The White House press secretary briefed journalists off-the-record that the fervent hope was that the protesters would go home in that time. It wasn’t thought likely though.

Secretary of Defence presented Walsh and his Cabinet with Operation Restore Order. In many ways, it was no different from what had been done in previous instances where severe public unrest had affected selected regions of the country – during the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 and parts of Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Emily in 2026 – and the Insurrection Act had then been invoked. However, at the beginning of ’29, the unrest was spread over a huge, multi-state area. Almost the entire West of the country was seeing anarchy and political violence. A large force was needed, much bigger than those used in Operations Garden Plot & Secure Peninsula. General Ferdinand and those at the Pentagon had crafted Restore Order to address the trans-state issue. Supporting the FBI and the US Marshals seeking to make arrests of key participants in the violence as well as protect federal property would be federalised national guardsmen along with elements of the US Army and the US Marines. Those National Guard units in the West – already called out by state governments – would be under federal control and subordinated to the command higher headquarters from the professional elements of the US Armed Forces. The latter would move against the areas of unrest from garrisons within the West and also from without. The mission would be enforcing public order for them and the national guardsmen, not fighting a war. Yet, they would bring with them heavy equipment to make that possible. Only a strong showing – tanks and armoured vehicles – was believed by Ferdinand to be enough to bring all of the violence to an end. Once it was, those many arrests for those indicted for sedition and secession attempts could take place.

Walsh had lost two members of his Cabinet on New Year’s Eve to resignations in protests at him invoking the Insurrection Act – and another three members (two of them to terrorist incidents) late the previous year – as well as having his vice president out in the West being one of the leaders of the insurrection. He had with him only those who were prepared to see this done rather than those trying to talk him out of it. That didn’t mean that everyone at the top of the Walsh Administration was happy with what Ferdinand wanted to do. His chief-of-staff (his fourth since he took office back in January 2025) was Park Sung-hee, AKA Sunny Park. Korean-American, she had faced much racism and xenophobia during her time at the White House from outside opponents. Many of those verbal attacks had come from certain Republican figures. Her hatred of that party, and thus all Republicans, was seen by many as a bit of an overreaction yet it was she, not they, who had to face all of that bigotry. Ferdinand was staying at the Pentagon after President-elect Roberts would be inaugurated. Sunny Park saw the fingerprints of the Republicans all over Restore Order, the deployment of the US Army & the US Marines too. It was just what senior Republicans such as Senator Stokes and Governor Cook had been demanding. In her opinion, one which she shared with Walsh, there was no need for the regular soldiers and marines when national guardsmen could do the job. The National Guard were better trained in dealing with civil unrest than others and had plenty of experience. Walsh was talked around by his chief-of-staff when she mentioned his ‘legacy’: her argument was that he didn’t want to go down in history as using troops against his own country, did he? His legacy, as everyone knew would be the defeat to China in the Taiwan Conflict but Sunny Park had long been massaging his ego.

Pretending it was his idea, less Ferdinand and others push back hard against his unelected senior adviser, Walsh instructed the element of Restore Order where the US Army and the US Marines were to deploy to be dropped from the plan. There was strong objection to that. Ferdinand, the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two of his Cabinet secretaries (Energy and Veteran’s Affairs) spoke of how the regular troops had a large number of military police units with them. The Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs tried to get Walsh to agree to a middle ground where the heavy armour components would remain in their garrisons – which Ferdinand objected to – and that there be a limiting of the numbers of regulars rather than see their participation cancelled. The president wouldn’t budge. Walsh, stubborn as he always was, had made his mind up. The Acting Attorney General, regarded by many as becoming a lickspittle since he’d stepped up to take over his dead predecessor’s duties, assured the Cabinet that with all of those extra federal agents made available from Washington & big field offices in the East, the problems in the West would be solved by mass arrests. Sunny Park spoke up in support of the president (as if it was his idea) and then came out with the unexpected remark that the national guardsmen currently being employed by the state’s weren’t doing their job properly: they apparently would do so under federal supervision and therefore there would be no need for the US Army and the US Marines. Everyone else was dumbstruck at where she was getting that from, everyone but Walsh that was. He agreed with her. Having heard enough of such madness, the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs tendered her resignation. She was out of a job in less than three weeks when the new administration moved in yet wouldn’t serve for any longer with Walsh acting like he was. The insurrection needed putting down and it wouldn’t be done just by National Guard units from those states where there was insurrection! She told him that and put that in her resignation letter which she released to the media. And as to Ferdinand… he was straight on the phone to Roberts.


As the country waited for Operation Restore Order to go into effect, there was less unrest seen earlier on New Year’s Day then there had been in the days following the death in federal custody of McCleary. A lot of hangovers were being slept off. Perhaps it might have been a case that Walsh’s proclamation had worked? That question was asked by the media and political commentators during the early part of January 1st. That came alongside disputes on whether there actually was insurrection underway in the West. Republicans generally agreed that there was while Democrats were split on the issue. On the latter side of the nation’s general partisan divide, those who said it wasn’t were those siding with those working towards a West America: other Democrats, the majority of them, agreed with the Republicans (through gritted teeth) though didn’t want to see force used to bring it to an end. They urged their fellow Democrats to rein in the secession rhetoric, accept that the presidency had been stolen from them & move on from that and work with them to end the political violence before the nation was torn into two.

The Justice Department’s list of those to be detained on federal charges was then leaked.

There had been mention made of it in the media since before McCleary was arrested with rampant speculation about who was on it. In a race to first get it online, Revolución just beat Slade to the punch there. Media networks shared it after those two websites had it up. The names on the list were a mix of high-profile elected officials as well as relative unknowns. Whether all of them would be arrested – would, could Vice President Padley be detained? – was up for debate yet there was more attention given to how wide-ranging it was. Comments were made that it looked like the United States was turning into a dictatorship with ‘enemies of the regime’ locked up. Two Democrats, Governor Rowan from Colorado and New York City’s Mayor Duke – on opposite sides of the matter of what was insurrection and the notion of West America –, each used similar language to the other where they compared Walsh to be acting like a dictator with enemies to be arrested. Pierce and MAR were on it just as McCleary was (it was a copy several weeks old, not the very latest one). They came out in criticism against it with the California governor rhetorically asking whether the Republican’s Stokes had put it together for Walsh. Stokes did an interview with Fox News where he called for more names to be added and for these arrests to take place at once. There were traitors to the country who needed locking up, he said, and why was Walsh delaying in taking action with Operation Restore Order?

Unrest began once more that afternoon. There was some speculation that the leak of the Justice Department’s so-called ‘Top 100’ (the online news network Look Left used that name) was behind it. That wasn’t the case though. There was still real anger against the death of McCleary, the long-standing grievance over the stolen presidential elections as well as the manipulations of events by those hellbent on trouble. In Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon (the worst-affected states in the West) there was rioting near to and acts of violence against federal buildings & employees. Hotspots of trouble erupted in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Washington state too… plus in the Red states of Idaho, Utah and even Texas. Boise, Salt Lake City and El Paso were soon gripped by violence like other urban areas. Targeted killings and assassination attempts took place late during New Year’s Day: right before Walsh’s ‘deadline’ expired. An FBI agent was shot dead by a sniper near Colorado Springs, a federal judge was badly injured by a car bomb in Phoenix, the (empty) federal courthouse in Santa Fe was blown up and two office admin staff working for the USCIS in Tacoma were kidnapped at gunpoint.

Walsh gave the go ahead for Operation Restore Order to commence. The insurrection underway was supposed to be put down by what followed. It wouldn’t.

41 – State’s rights

The morning after, Carmen Espinoza Diaz, Governor of New Mexico, made a televised statement outside the State Capitol in Santa Fe. She told the federal government to ‘stay out of her state’. The people of New Mexico no longer would ‘stand for federal invasion’. Don’t come back, she told Justice Department federal agents, or ‘face the consequences’. Espinoza’s words were carried across the nation, and then around the globe too. She was furious at what had happened the day beforehand and let it all out. It had only been a few weeks back, in early December 2028, that Espinoza had considered going to the Justice Department in DC and telling the then Attorney General Underwood that she had been approached by Padley & Pierce with the intention of having her help pull her state out of the union. She hadn’t been in favour of that at all and regarded what the vice president and California’s governor had been talking about to be the most serious threat to New Mexico imaginable. The talk of secession from them back then had been something which she had been utterly opposed to. Her words on January 2nd 2029 told a very different story. She moved to declare that federal agents were effectively banned from New Mexico at her command. Whether she would enforce that, and what would be the result of trying to, no one knew. It had been said though, openly too, and she was the first governor from the West to make such a statement where there was what many interpreted as her defining her state’s rights in firm opposition to the rest of the country’s rule.

Up in neighbouring Colorado later that same day, Governor Rowan addressed gathered journalists at the Governor’s Mansion. He told them that like New Mexico, his state had seen the entry the night before of an influx of federal agents arresting Colorado citizens on what he regarded as illegitimate charges. There was the ‘invasion’ too which he spoke of where private military contractors engaged by the Department of Homeland Security had arrived to secure federal property. All were unwelcome in his state. Colorado had the right as a ‘sovereign state’, he said, to demand that they leave. That he did: ‘go home’, Rowan declared. His remarks, plus what Espinoza had said earlier, were heard clearly in DC. Neither state had the rights which their governors said that they had and for such comments to be made meant that the two of them were now considered to be joining others engaged in sedition and attempted secession. From the Justice Department, the Acting AG called over to the White House (after being at both Blair House and Camp David for some time, Walsh was back there) and told the president that he wanted to have the two of them arrested. What they had come out with was just as bad as what Ashby, Carville, King, Gutierrez & others sought for federal detainment had said previously.

Walsh gave permission for the process of indicting Espinoza and Rowan to begin. Charges were to be drawn up and readied though there would only be action taken upon his word. The president then had the Acting AG stay on the line while he started a conference call with others at the top level of his administration. The results of the previous day’s activities with regard to Operation Restore Order were gone over with the including of what had been happening that morning as it continued. Ashby and Gutierrez were both still not in custody and there were others still on the run with less of a public profile than them two. Major disturbances had eased off somewhat in the West yet they were still not over. FBI Director Cohen reported that his agents were engaged in the hunt for the kidnappers of a pair of USCIS employees – office staff, not anyone senior at the Citizenship & Immigration Service – but had very few leads to go on. Ferdinand explained in more detail about the complicity suspected with National Guard elements out West when their supporting role for Restore Order had been sabotaged by governors & state political figures.

No one brought him any good news. All Walsh wanted was for all of the trouble and unrest to end. He sought that conclusion so his term in office would finish with the nation – somehow – in a better state than when he entered the Oval Office almost four years before. What he was told showed that that wasn’t going to be the case unless he would turn Operation Restore Order into the success which it was supposed to be and it lived up to its name. Ferdinand and the Joint Chiefs wanted to do what the plan had initially called for and deploy regular elements of the US Armed Forces into the West: Walsh’s chief-of-staff once more convinced him that that would be a terrible idea. Of his own volition, the president came to the notion of using further national guardsmen instead. Those from other states would enter the West and help enforce order where arrests could be made of those acting against the United States and there would be a complete cessation of political violence. That wasn’t possible, his Secretary of Defence informed him. To federalise National Guard units from other states and deploy them into the West could need the approval of the state governors into where they would be sent. That wasn’t going to come. Espinoza and Rowan, plus Pierce too, weren’t going to give the nod. If it was tried anyway, it would be illegal. Walsh spoke of using an executive order. He and the Acting AG discussed the possibly of doing that but Ferdinand was adamant that it couldn’t be done. What was needed was the US Army and the US Marines, bringing with them their many military police units too, and the issue would be resolved. An exasperated Ferdinand told his president that every hour wasted made the situation less likely to eventually succeed and cost lives. Walsh wouldn’t budge though. He didn’t want to send in troops, not regulars anyway. That was what dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the world did and he wouldn’t follow their lead.

Concluding the tele-conference, Walsh told the Justice Department to keep on adding additional federal agents to those already in the West. He wanted more arrests made including those two governors when he took that step. Ferdinand was instructed to do all that was possible in making federalised national guardsmen in the West follow orders while participating in Restore Order. When Ferdinand later spoke to President-elect Roberts, the Secretary of Defence told him that it was a whole load of nothing that Walsh was doing to reserve the failures met during the supposed crushing of the ongoing insurrection. Both the Secretary of the Army (not a Cabinet-level post) and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau (a member of the Joint Chiefs) later informed Ferdinand that if the president and the Acting AG did try to use an executive order to circumvent the law on where national guardsmen could be sent to, against the wishes of the state’s which they entered, they would each resign. They wouldn’t serve under a president who would be starting a civil war because such actions would cause that if nothing else did.


Images from Operation Restore Order and political commentary about Walsh’s attempt to put down what he had declared to be an insurrection completely dominated the media as January 2029 began. Coverage was all encompassing with everyone’s opinion sought. Patrick O’Shea, Massachusetts’ junior senator, who the DNC had wanted the previous Summer to run as MAR’s running mate in the presidential race (she’d said Hell No to that), made an appearance on the web-radio talk show Connor’s Corner. The subject of what was going on out West was, naturally, all that the two of them talked about. The host attacked what he called ‘Western exceptionalism’ (that had been said before by others) when it came to politicians in California & elsewhere as well as suggesting that what those out there were trying to create was a ‘new Confederacy’. O’Shea – whom MAR and many progressives across the nation regarded as a privileged phony – countered those assertions. He spoke of the founding fathers of the United States and how they had stood up to oppression. They were called traitors by the British Empire, he said, yet had fought for an idea which they had believed was right and one which many in America at that time hadn’t agreed with them on the merits of it. Calvin Connor suggested with horror that O’Shea was defending what was going on. No, his guest told him, not at all. The senator said that he was just explaining the reasoning of those out West: they believed that they had the right to rebel against an undemocratic system of oppression just as the nation’s founding fathers had done so. Denying that he was back-peddling when Connor asked if he was, O’Shea said that he didn’t support the cause of those who wanted to see a West America. They were wrong in their beliefs and were endangering the lives of countless Americans by their actions. O’Shea was just trying to explain things…

Excerpts from O’Shea’s appearance on Connor’s Corner were with rapid haste put to use by the Republicans. They only used the ‘good stuff’, that of a senior Democrat supposedly making excuses for secession, was put into video clips and quotes. What he said won him no friends anywhere. Those out West had no time for someone like O’Shea. He had won office on his family name – who his grandfather and great-uncle had been many decades past – and claimed to speak for the underprivileged. O’Shea had never faced struggle nor adversary in his life and he certainly wasn’t fighting for the causes which they were. He was a fraud as far as they were concerned. Among Democrats elsewhere in the country, they were furious at how he had put his foot in his mouth. His remarks were a gift to the Republicans to take out of context and use against all Democrats with abandon. His fellow Massachusetts senator, Laura Yorke, had been leading the fight in the public arena against support for West America… with some people already talking about a 2032 presidential election run for her. In an off-the-record comment to a journalist, she called him a wholly unrepeatable & hate-filled name. On-the-record, she savaged his arguments about what West America was all about. Those out West weren’t fighting against oppression and for democracy, she said, but rather acting out of a sense of entitlement to the detriment of the rest of the country. Like her, so many other Democrats didn’t want O’Shea to ever open his stupid mouth again!

What Vice President Padley had said to the House Minority Leader on New Year’s Eve about the supposed right of states out West to organise plebiscites on secession came to the attention of the Republicans too. Congress was to open on January 3rd and it was ammunition for a course of action which Senate Majority Leader Green and House Speaker Fraser wanted to follow. There was a recording of those comments and, if he chose to try to not release them, they decided that they would force the House Minority Leader to hand them over. Impeachment of her had been discussed when Walsh was at Walter Reed under observation for suspected poisoning but put off then. What she had said was considered to be finally enough. The two of them, plus further members of their party, prepared comments to make and speeches to deliver as they got ready to begin that process once Congress was in session. She was no longer vice president in a couple of week’s time and impeaching her wouldn’t do any real harm to the cause of West America. Public statements to the contrary on that latter could come but the real aim was to land another strong blow against the Democrats.

In addition, the Republican leadership was also hearing that there would be many, many absences come the next day by Democrats who held Senate and US House seats in Congress. Nothing was confirmed yet it looked likely that the majority of those from the West were organising some sort of ‘boycott’. Green and Fraser waited to see how that would play out and how they could make use of that for their own good: that would really help with making Padley’s impeachment faster and certain to go through. Each agreed that it was a foolish thing for those Democrats to do while seeing the potential for another partisan victory coming. Those Democrats and their infighting & idiocy were the gift which just kept on giving!

My notepad, with a detailed plan for update #43, went in the washing machine yesterday. Fun times!
I'll be back writing today.
Same ideas, possibly a new take on things. I guess without this particular butterfly things might have been different from how the story will continue yet, maybe it'll just be the same.